by Dan Kelly
Looking to where he’s pointing, I see a partial catwalk along this end of the warehouse and I spot some movement behind another pillar. Then, just for a moment, I get a glimpse of Aldrich’s face as he repositions himself to get a better view of where he’s looking. He’s just waiting for Brett to give himself away and make himself an easy target. Aldrich is so focused on Brett that he’s completely unaware that I’m very close by. If I crouch down, I’m completely out of his line of sight, but I can see snatches of him. I don’t have a clear shot at him or I’d take it, so I decide to make some noise and see what happens. If I can distract him long enough, Brett will be able to retrieve his weapon and we can go back on the offensive. I might even be able to get a clear shot at Aldrich when he reacts to the unexpected noise.
I’m new at this stuff, so I do my best to silently communicate my intentions by pointing at Aldrich, then at me and then at his gun lying on the floor. Amazingly he smiles and nods his head. I’ll be damned. He understands my amateur attempt to clue him in.
I look around for something I can use to make a lot of noise away from Brett and me and find some empty bottles on a shelf. I grab a couple and toss them down the aisle towards the back wall. When they crash on the floor the unexpected happens. Aldrich doesn’t come out from behind the pillar to investigate. He retreats through a door that I didn’t see because it was closed and directly behind the pillar.
Brett snatches up his gun, joins me in the aisle and says, “He’s probably thinking there must be another way out of this place and is looking for it. I think there is too. A building this big is bound to have more than one access. Come on. Follow me and don’t take any foolish chances with this guy. He’s agile, fast and hits what he aims at.”
We find an exit at the back of the warehouse with a set of stairs off to the side leading to the second floor. The door is wide open so we assume this is the way Aldrich headed for greener pastures. The door opens up onto another parking area big enough to park a semi in and when we cautiously walk out there’s no sign of him.
I say, “He couldn’t have gotten very far. He’s fast, but we’re not tortoises.”
“You go around that way and I’ll go this way. Once you get away from these buildings there’s a lot of wide open space and we’re sure to see him high tailing it. If we don’t, he still in this complex somewhere.”
A few minutes later we meet out front and neither one of us has seen him hightailing it in any direction.
“Chet, this complex is big. I was lucky to see him run into this warehouse. He can get lost in here and when he decides to leave we’ll never know it. It will take a lot more people than the two of us to have any chance of tracking him down in these surroundings before he takes off.
“We’ve now lost the element of surprise, so our chances of catching him unawares have for all practical purposes been reduced to zero. I think we’ve blown it and should get out of Andorra before Aldrich decides to tell his story to the locals which could very well put our butts in the wringer.”
I suddenly realize we’re standing out in the open and make easy targets if Aldrich is in one of the buildings close by and sees us. Without taking any time to respond, I yank Brett into a doorway of one of the suites and down on the ground just as bullets whizz over our heads, shattering the glass windows in the entryway.
Before I can react, Brett is up and charging the suite where the shots came from firing at an open window. When he gets there miraculously not shot again, he dives through the open window, does a somersault on the floor and comes up spraying bullets all over the area. I run over to the window and look in expecting to see Aldrich riddled with bullets lying on the floor, but no one’s there but Brett. He shouts, “I think I hit him just before he went through that door over there. Go around and cover the back in case he tries to get out that way. I’ll come at him from here. If there’s no other way out of this suite, we’ll have him sandwiched between us.”
I run around back and find a solid metal door which is locked. There are offices on both sides of the door with windows large enough to let light and fresh air in but too small for a grown man to climb through. There are some overflowing trash cans up against the building and I tug t hem over to prevent the door from opening and run back to the front of the suite to cover Brett’s back.
Just as I climb through the window Brett dived through moments ago another shot is fired. As I run through the door Brett and Aldrich went through I find a hallway that runs off to the right leading to other offices. The door to one of them is open. I tip toe down the hallway and peek in. It’s not an office but a bathroom and sitting on the floor holding his head is Brett and there’s a lot of blood running down onto his face and he looks dazed. Standing over him is Aldrich with his gun pointed at Brett’s head. I shout, “Drop it or you’re a dead man.”
In one synchronized movement, Aldrich spins around, aims his gun at my forehead and squeezes the trigger. It happens so fast I don’t even have time to blink. When I see him squeeze the trigger the last thought I have is of Janet. Imagine that. Sadie would be ecstatic if she knew. But nothing happens. I’m still standing where I was seconds ago. Aldrich squeezes the trigger again with the same results. I’m not going to give him a third chance and put two slugs dead center in his chest and he drops his gun and falls to the floor.
I walk over to him and see that his eyes are open and staring at me and he’s fighting to breathe. He says something, but too softly for me to hear. I bend down to hear him better and he whispers, “Tell Katherine I still love her.” He takes a few more breaths and then he’s with us no more.
I walk over to check Brett out and see that his eyes are no longer glassy, but his head is still bleeding pretty badly. Remembering the last shot I start looking him over for another bullet wound, but don’t find any. Helping him get up off the floor I ask, “What happened to you? I heard a shot, but you haven’t taken another hit.”
“When I went came through that door in the front office, I saw the hallway off to the right and started to check the offices for Aldrich. When I opened the door to this room I saw it was a bathroom and moved in quickly to check the stall. The floor was wet and I slipped and took a header, cracking my head on the edge of the counter and then I must have blacked out for a few seconds because I didn’t hear a shot. When I returned to the here and now, Aldrich was standing over me with his gun pointed at my head.”
Looking at the wall over the counter, we see a bullet hole alongside the mirror above the sink. I speculate, “He must have fired a second after you started to fall and the bullet probably missed you by a hair. It’s about time some good luck came our way.”
Looking over at Aldrich I say, “This calls for a change in plans. What are we going to do now? What are we going to do with him?”
Without missing a beat Brett says, “Leave him and get the hell out of here. We’ll drive back to our hotel, check out and catch the next plane back to the States. I’ll cancel the plans I made to leave this mountain paradise. I have a throw away phone, so I’ll make an anonymous call to the police during the drive back to our hotel and say someone’s been shot at the business park on whatever the name of the street is out front and say I don’t want to get involved and hang up.”
Bending down and going through Aldrich’s pockets he finds his wallet, looks through it and then puts it back in the pocket he found it in after wiping his prints off it with some paper towel. Standing back up he continues with, “The ID in his wallet is in his real name and has a D. C. address, so the authorities here will go through channels to notify someone in the States, probably the FBI, and after the locals look into the matter and come up with nothing arrangements will eventually be made to have the body transported back to D.C. The Crusader case will be closed out and sent to the archives never to see the light of day again.”
“Okay, that works for me, but we should look for a clinic or a hospital in Les Escaldes to have your head and arm looked at before we split. Infections can
be nasty things.”
Taking his coat and shirt off so we can get a good look at the damage, we are relieved to find no hole in his arm but instead a deep furrow. The bleeding has stopped, but the area is starting to turn a dark purple.
Brett asks, “How am I going to explain these booboos.”
“Tell the doctor you fell down a flight of stairs outside one of the tourist attractions, hit your head on the edge of a step and gouged your arm on a piece of broken wrought iron which was part of the bannister. That’ll fly.”
“You know, Dawson, for someone who claims to have a lousy poker face you’re a damn good liar.”
Chuckling I say, “In my line of work you sometimes have to come up with fibs on a moment’s notice and I’ve had a lot of practice. I don’t play much poker, so maybes that it explains it. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
We manage to get back to our car without running into anybody and we’re soon on our way back to our hotel. I’ve managed not to get shot, but my empty stomach is rumbling and growling like a junkyard dog letting me know it’s fed up with my neglect.
Chapter 45
When we get back to the hotel we decide to stay one more night and fly out tomorrow. We inquire about available medical facilities for Brett and a lady at the front desk tells us the hotel has several doctors on retainer in case their guests have a need for emergency treatment and puts in a call for one of them to come to the hotel. Brett goes up to our room to wait for the doctor and I head for the hotel’s café that’s open 24/7 lickety-split. An hour later my stomach and I are friends again.
I’ve bought some take out for Brett and when I get to our room the doctor is finishing up with Brett. “Your friend is going to be okay. I had to stitch up the gashes in his head and arm and have given him an injection of an antibiotic to stave off infection. I’ve also given him some pills to take, one in the morning with breakfast and one at bedtime. These will also help prevent infection. He must have taken quite a tumble down those stairs to mess himself up this much.”
I respond by saying, “That’s good news.” and not acknowledging his comment about the fall down the stairs, thankful that he bought the story. “What do we owe you?”
“I’ll bill the hotel by charging it to your room. You’ll settle up with them when you check out.”
“Fine and thanks for coming so promptly.”
“You’re welcome.”
When the doctor leaves, Brett tells me he has made reservations for a flight back to Dulles departing at 9:30 in the morning and arriving in D.C. at 11:30 in the morning EST. He notified the police of the shooting at the business park soon after we drove around the block to get the name of the street fronting the area of the complex where Aldrich and I came face-to-face so that ball is in motion. There’s nothing left for us to do now, but to try to get some sleep.
Brett must have been as hungry as I was because he made short work of the food I brought up from the café and then it was lights out. Brett was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. I on the other hand lay awake thinking about what story I was going to tell everybody to explain my absence and how the demise of the Crusader should be brought to the attention of the public.
Thinking about these things and coming up with zilch wears me out and I finally fall asleep.
The next morning the killing in the business park is all over the local news. Every channel we have access to in our room is covering the story. We check out, grab some breakfast at the café, turn in our car rental and take a cab to the airport. Mission accomplished. We got what we came here for; to put an end to Aldrich’s vendetta, but it didn’t come about the way we planned. Murphy’s Law interfered once again.
We arrive at Dulles right on schedule and about an hour later Brett is leaving me off at my door saying, “It’s been a gas. We’ve got to do this again sometime.”
“Pop the trunk.” I climb out of the car and after retrieving my suitcase I come around to the driver’s door and point for him to open the window. He does and I say, “If we ever get together again, I hope it’s to go to a ball game or something equally trivial. I’m not cut out for doing what we had to do in Andorra on a steady basis. There are safer ways to get ulcers.”
“Hey, you held your own quite well even though you are a little long in the tooth for what went down over there.”
Before I can think of any decent comeback, he laughs, peels rubber and takes off to where ever Special Forces troops go when they’re not risking life and limb to make the world safer for the rest of us. I like and respect the guy and hope he we do see each other again.
When I get to my apartment the first thing I do is turn on my TV to see if what happened in Andorra has hit the U.S. of A yet. Surfing quickly through the channels I breathe a little easier when I come across nothing about it because I don’t want the President to be blindsided and I haven’t called to brief him yet.
That’s the second thing I do. Without any preamble the President says, “Lay it on me.”
I give him a detailed account of what happened in Andorra, including what Brett and I are surmising as to how the Andorra police will handle the matter and finish with my concerns about how I am going to explain my absence to folks here at home.
“I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, Chet, and I’ve decided to follow an old axiom my father taught me; the best lie is a partial truth. When the news of the Crusader’s demise hits our airwaves, I’ll release a statement to the press which will put the entire blame on you and Brett for bypassing all appropriate government agencies for approval which would have been denied and acting surreptitiously and independently to bring Aldrich back to the U. S. to pay for his crimes. I’ll say the two of you couldn’t live with the idea of him getting away and living the good life in luxurious surroundings and decided to get off your duffs and do something about it. You have broken none of our laws, so you’ll be free from prosecution here for what you did. I wouldn’t suggest visiting Andorra again though.
“The two of you pairing up for this undertaking can be explained by my intimating you’ve known each other for quite some time and confide in each other frequently. How you found out Aldrich was in Andorra can be explained by telling the absolute truth. I haven’t been able to think of anything else that might come up that you can’t answer truthfully. I’ll say you swore each other to secrecy to reduce the chance of someone finding out what the two of you were up to.
“This will get me off the political hook in all sorts of ways and we can put this Crusader mess to bed for good. I’ll explain how I know all this by saying you contacted me after the fact so I would be able to defend myself if I were accused of approving an illegal act on the shores of another country. I’ll say I’m making this statement to meet any accusations that might be in the works head on.
“If you don’t want to be a scapegoat, we’ll come up something else. I’m going to run this by Conklin and if he shoots it down the same course of action will apply. How do you feel about this?”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll get much static from anyone for doing what we did. A lot of folks will be grateful, but what will this do to Brett’s military career? The military brass doesn’t think too highly of folks who skirt the command structure to have their way about things.”
“First, Brett Conklin is a full bird colonel, so he’s fairly high up in the ranks already. Second, I’m Commander In-Chief of all our armed forces and have the means to prevent any adverse reaction to his part in all of this.”
“Well then, I say let her rip. Besides, this could be good for business.”
“I’ll get back to you with Conklin’s response.” Click.
Okay, how do I explain my absence in the meantime? No comment? Mind your own business? What? I decide on staying with the reason I gave in my voice mail message to Felicity, Don, and Janet before I left for Andorra. Consistency is a lot easier to deal with than dreaming up new lies all the time and trying to remember them and what lie you told to whom
.